Although the three-strip Technicolor technique had been used previously in short and animated films and in sequences in feature films, Becky Sharp (1935) was the first feature-length film to use the three-strip Technicolor process, which created a separate film register for each of the three primary colors, for the entirety of the film.
Pat Nixon (then Patricia Ryan), the future wife of Richard Nixon and the First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974, makes her feature-film debut, though uncredited, during the ballroom scene. She was an occasional movie extra while attending college at USC, had a single spoken line in the film, but it did not make the final edit.
Lowell Sherman began as director of the production but died of double pneumonia on Dec 28, 1934 after only a few weeks filming. HR notes that Sherman refused to abandon the picture even after his illness had become serious. His replacement, Rouben Mamoulian, scrapped his footage and began again from scratch. Pauline Garon, Sherman's wife at the time of production, was given the role of Fifine following his death.
Being the first three-strip Technicolor film, the color at the time did not look too realistic; one critic commented that the cast looked like boiled salmon dipped in mayonnaise.
In 1984, the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the film, under the supervision of archivist Robert Gitt. Rouben Mamoulian appeared at the premiere of the restored print at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theatre in Beverly Hills. Becky Sharp (1935) was restored to its almost original three-color look by the UCLA Film Archives. The restored version includes 64 minutes of three-color footage, and 24 minutes of two-color footage of varying quality.